A GameCentral reader worries that he’s not being creative enough in how he plays games, and that a youth playing 8-bit games has limited his approach with modern titles.

Halo: Combat Evolved – did you try a bit of friendly fire?

I have a friend who plays games in a way that I have never witnessed before. He tests boundaries that I have never crossed in all my gaming life of 30 years which prompted me to ask myself why?A few years into the life of the original Xbox I introduced the friend in question, who was a colleague at the time, to gaming via the medium of Halo: Combat Evolved to show him how brilliant it was and of course to enjoy a bit of co-op. Shortly after jumping out of the Pelican on the Silent Cartographer mission he asked if it was possible to ‘shoot the Marines?’ ‘No’ I exclaimed. In reality it had never entered my head to try. They were my allies. Why would I want to shoot them? He promptly shot one in the head and to my amazement they fired back and they even shouted something before firing at us. I was amazed both at the reaction to his merciless killing but the fact he, and Bungie, had thought of it in the first place. I need to say that this man is a kind father and great friend and violence isn’t a part of his character.My friend is now an avid gamer who continues to shock me. When we attended a midnight release of Grand Theft Auto IV we rushed back to his house to play it. As soon as the game started he ditched the story as soon as he could, found a baseball bat in an alley and just started hitting random objects and people to see what would happen. This absolutely confounded me because all I wanted to do was follow the first mission and get a save house active, as is tradition in Grand Theft Auto.I think the reason I don’t test games in this way is that I’ve been pre-programmed to play a certain way over a long period of time. I started gaming on the VIC-20 so I think my understanding of what is possible has been dictated by the limitations of my early experiences.My friend had played a few games but his first console was an Xbox. He came into gaming at a stage where feature sets were so much more advanced than the games I cut my teeth on. I believe the lack of constraints within newer titles has helped him develop a much greater sense of what might be possible and he is absolutely willing to explore those possibilities with frequently amusing consequences.As a result he is always telling me about the amazing things he’s discovered and more often than not, I haven’t even considered trying them. It’s not that I’m not creative in the way I play but I think I perceive boundaries where perhaps there aren’t any.I look forward to reading about how other people play games and whether they think my theory holds water.By Big Lizafish (gamertag)

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